Mojo Surf Las Palmas

The camp

Mojo Surf is Eduardo Acosta's school. He was born on Gran Canaria, is a three-time Spanish champion, and the only surfer to have won all three categories of the national circuit. He has been coaching for more than thirty years and wrote the method his instructors teach. The school is a 120 m² space facing La Cícer, with changing rooms, showers and a room where you watch your filmed sessions back. The house, La Casa de Mojo, is in the same neighbourhood, next to the beach: dorms for four or six in wooden bunks, private rooms, equipped kitchens, a lounge with a corner to work in, and a terrace under a pergola with fake grass and sofas, where the day's video gets watched, people nap after lunch and the barbecue comes round every week.

La Cícer is the southern end of Las Canteras, where the rock bar that shelters the rest of the beach runs out. Sand, lefts and rights, any tide: it is where the island learns, and the two-hour lesson is taught by level, 0 to 5, with groups never mixed and no more than seven students to an instructor. In December, its best month, count on four clean days in a week. When a north-north-westerly swell comes in under a south-south-easterly breeze, the wave holds its shape and the whole neighbourhood paddles out at once. It is a city beach, and you learn the line-up as much as the take-off. The water never drops below 18 °C; the season runs October to March, and in summer this coast goes flat. At the other end of the bay, the right at El Confital is waiting for when you have a few winters behind you, and the coaching package goes looking for the best waves of the moment with Eduardo Acosta.

Everything happens on one stretch of sand. The lesson starts in front of the school, the board and wetsuit are yours until evening, and the house is a short walk away, so you can go back out on your own in the afternoon without renting a car or a board. After the twenty-five minutes from the airport there is no more driving all week, unless you take the Surftrip, which drives you each day with a guide to whichever beach suits your level.

No meals are served: you cook in the house, and restaurants, supermarkets and surf shops are round the corner. Evenings often start on the terrace with guitars and beer, then move down to the Las Canteras promenade, which eats late. When you arrive you can sign up for the house's trips and dinners, and the school says it plainly: come alone. Right for someone who wants to actually improve, with a method and a camera, and spend the evenings in a city rather than at the end of a dirt track.